FeistyUpper
If you don't like this, we can't be friends.
Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Fleur
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
Paul J. Nemecek
Nurse Betty is a film about a meek waitress and wife who is thrown into bizarre circumstances and responds in an equally bizarre fashion. Rene Zelwegger plays the waitress who is married to a domineering, boorish used-car salesman. Her husband is also up to his ears in illegal wheeling and dealing unbeknownst to his wife. Betty deals with the dreariness of her day-to-day life by losing herself in a soap opera, and by fantasizing about one of the characters in the soap (a debonair doctor played by Greg Kinnear). When something happens to her husband, Betty snaps and projects herself into her soap opera fantasy world. She leaves town and drives to Los Angeles looking for the object of her affections. The two criminals who had dealings with her husband pursue her to LA so that they can tidy up loose ends.In one sense, this film is a standard crime/suspense film. A deeper look reveals a slightly more complex story line about the increasingly thin line between fantasy and fiction on the one hand and the "real world." In this sense, Nurse Betty is a postmodern film with much in common with films like Fargo and Pulp Fiction. The rapid movement between tender moments, funny scenes, and gruesome scenes is standard fare in films with postmodern sensibilities, so much so that the device is already a bit of a cliché.Nurse Betty also has much in common with films like EDTV, the Truman Show, and Pleasantville. All of these films deal with the postmodern obsession with virtual reality and simulated reality. There are some interesting issues raised in the film and there are clever turns in the story line. The real strength of the film is the superior performance by Rene Zellwegger and the great supporting performance by Morgan Freeman as the hitman with a heart of gold.The greatest weakness of the film is also in the acting. Chris Rock plays Morgan Freeman's partner and basically plays the same obnoxious character that he played in Lethal Weapon 4--a film that has earned a special place on the list of films I despise. This film has some merit, and could generate some interesting conversations about our media-obsessed society and how it connects with what Thoreau referred to as our "lives of quiet desperation." While I like the basic theme and was impressed by some of the performances, I did not find it as interesting as Pleasantville or as engaging as The Truman Show. When you add the gruesome violence and other gratuitous insertions in Nurse Betty, most viewers would probably have a better time with the video version of one of the films mentioned above.
Python Hyena
Nurse Betty (2000): Dir: Neil LaBute / Cast: Renee Zellweger, Morgan Freeman, Chris Rock, Greg Kinnear, Aaron Eckhart: Very unique black comedy about fixation or excessive imagination resulting from being desensitized. Renee Zellweger plays Betty Sizemore who works at a diner and obsesses over a soap opera called A Reason to Love. She believes that soap star David Revell speaks directly at her. After her husband is savagely scalped to death, due to a situation involving stolen drugs, Betty gleefully sets out to meet the man of her dreams. Too disturbing for laughs but interesting and detailed. Director Neil LaBute presents the fantasy dysfunctional elements mixed with warped reality. Zellweger is radiant poising as a nurse believing a false lifestyle. When she finally does snapped back into reality, the film makes some interesting implications especially with Betty. Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock are excellent as her husband's killers out to find drugs hidden in the trunk of her car, unknown to her. Freeman draws laughs through a sudden infatuation with her, while Rock is violent and excessive. With that said, the violence presented is too graphic for the film's tone. Greg Kinnear plays Revell who sees Betty as an act until the tables are turned. Aaron Eckhart plays Betty's husband who gets in too deep with our two assassins. Bizarre portrait of reality and fantasy collision. Score: 9 / 10
evanston_dad
Neil LaBute's uneasy blend of thriller and dark comedy is a queasy affair.LaBute doesn't have a light touch at all, which more than anything is what a film like this desperately needs. He begins the movie with a scene of intensely graphic violence, and it's hard to recover from it. You can't sit back and enjoy the film's comedic elements when you're not sure when or if something horrible is going to happen again.Renee Zellweger does her best, but she's in the hands of a director who's out of his element.Grade: C
secondtake
Nurse Betty (2000)This is a sleeper, a dark comedy with enough inventive twists to call to mind The Truman Show but with a greater sense of reality to hold it down. Renee Zellweger is flawless as the naive, sweet, but utterly detached young woman named Betty who is addicted to a soap opera called "A Reason to Love." This seems sweet enough, but her husband is a jerk (totally) and things start to spiral, and get dizzy, as reality even for the viewer starts to shift ground.Not that you are ever confused about what is happening or who the good guys are. The good guys are not Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock, for sure, as this unlikely and comedic father and son duo get involved, incidentally at first, in Betty's strange inner and outer life. A chase of sorts ensues, the soap opera becomes reality, and then reality becomes soap opera. And it's really hilarious and inventive and fast paced.Is it a total work of genius? Probably not. Maybe Charlie Kaufman would have added another twist in there (I'm not sure how), and certainly some of the side characters could have seemed less cardboard, or less awkward as actors. But Zellweger is unbelievable (really, your jaw might drop at how convincing she could play her mental blindness, and her awakening, of sorts). And Morgan Freeman is his usually convincing and engaging self. The utterly disgusting violence of one 20 second scene might turn off some viewers near the beginning, but if you can keep watching, the movie gets better from there. Much better.
